Sudden actual thoughts I had

[Undertoad]

...Is my phone screen unlock pattern too obvious?... it's not that weird, maybe it's not the "1234" of screen unlock patterns, but maybe it's the "2580"?... surely the "big L" or "big Z" is a more common unlock pattern than mine... are screen unlock swipe patterns supposed to be, like, secure enough?...

[sexobon]

Considering there's supposed to be hundreds of thousands of combinations with nine point, I don't see why not. Imagination helps...

[regular.joe]

Wait, did someone post a best Android lock screen video using an Iphone!? Perfect.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Sudden actual thoughts, I've had few, some of them, too dirty to mention...

I'm copying a DVD to a folder and a little box pops up telling me, 'yes massa, right away massa, it'll take a couple minutes." What? A couple minutes? Don't you know I'm a white male American, you inexpensive home PC?

But I really don't have many options, so as I sit here doing some not very vitriolic grumbling, I notice it's transferring 3.2 GB per second. Hmm, 3.2 GB, that's 3,200,000 bytes per second, or 25,760,000 bits per second.

Holy crap, this isn't some super Google or NSA computer, just a run of the mill homebody Dell. If those bits were letters it would equal about 8 King James bibles per SECOND. Maybe I shouldn't grumble too much.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Sudden actual thoughts, I've had few, some of them, too dirty to mention...

I'm copying a DVD to a folder and a little box pops up telling me, 'yes massa, right away massa, it'll take a couple minutes." What? A couple minutes? Don't you know I'm a white male American, you inexpensive home PC?

But I really don't have many options, so as I sit here doing some not very vitriolic grumbling, I notice it's transferring 3.2 GB per second. Hmm, 3.2 GB, that's 3,200,000 bytes per second, or 25,760,000 bits per second. Holy crap, this isn't some super Google or NSA computer. If those bits were letters it would equal about 8 King James bibles per SECOND.

Hey, wait a damn minute, I'm only copying like 4.4 GB total, you lying sumbitch! The damn computer was trying to make me feel guilty for criticizing it.

The PC is sentient!

[sexobon]

While reading the preceding posts suddenly I thought I had vertical diplopia.

[Gravdigr]

[xoxoxoBruce]

I wrote the first one and previewed it, then realized the bastard was lying to me so altered the post and hit submit. I see the altered post but had no reason to scroll up. Damifino why it posted both.

[lumberjim]

You can say that again

[xoxoxoBruce]

The last time the United States was at war, was the big one, WW II. Since then Korea, Vietnam, various banana republics, the middle east, we've had parts of our military doing their best, giving their all, for "our national interests" as defined by politicians.

But during WW II the country was at war, everyone was involved, like it or not. Some actively gathered scrap, rolled bandages, (Wo)manned the USOs, others just grumbled about rationing and difficulties, but went along. Everyone knew someone in the military, and were likely related to them... everyone.

During that time every field of science, engineering, and medicine were tapped to come up with ways to help the war effort. If no field covers that, create one. About every empty space available was utilized for research and it was all SECRET, unless it was TOP SECRET. Hey buddy haven't seen you in a year, what have you been up to? Secret, how about you? Secret. Even if you knew they were bullshitting, if you pressed it you could disappear. No kidding, we had internment camps in the desert, mobsters and longshoremen patrolling the NYC docks, and itchy trigger fingers everywhere.

Now with all this stuff automatically stamped SECRET, and commies under the bed, it took decades for the existence of some of the research projects to be disclosed. Sure the A-Bomb and high profile stuff, but I'll bet some never were disclosed. Maybe to prevent questions of how much money went to Daddy Warbucks, too.

At Harvard University the Harvard Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory, was drafted into the war effort to help the military communicate. You've seen the John Wayne types on the silver screen talking on the radio of their fighter or bomber, with a burning tail, and machine guns blazing. Real people did that too, but it was a fuck of a lot noisier than the movies. Communicating was both critical and difficult, way more than we'll have to reshoot that scene, no do-overs for dead men.

The Harvard Lab was asked to establish standards to help clarify transmitted speech. What words to avoid and what words to use in helping cut mistakes. They did just that and to test men and equipment wrote the "Harvard Sentences". Seventy two lists of ten sentences each like this one.

But that says 1965? There was a ton of research during the war on devices to transmit/receive voice... and pictures. This market exploded after the war and the IEEE adopted the Harvard Sentences as part of their standards, while reviewing and revising them periodically. The, "Can you hear me now?", commercials actually happened, except instead of a guy stopping every few feet to ask, vans were transmitting Harvard Sentences while driving all over the country, to test the network.

When I look at this staff picture from 1945 I can't help but assigning personalities and mannerisms to some of them.


The guy on the back row, the tallest one, with a pipe in his mouth. The pipe is always in his mouth but rarely lit. Nobody has ever seen him eat. His sandwiches disappear but he's never been seen biting one. Most communication in nod & grunt but somehow everyone knows what he means.

Everyone knew there was to be a class staff photo today. Some don't give a shit, others are wearing the Sunday best. Some are embarrassed by their wardrobe but did the best they could for geeks and nerds.

A lot has changed in 70 years, but some things never change, case in point... the woman in the first row on your right, holding a cat, casual stance, fully relaxed. Why not, that's DiDi the boss's wife. It'll always be good to be the queen.

[Griff]

When did the Hitler 'stache go out of favor?

[elSicomoro]

Probably during WW2

[xoxoxoBruce]

I believe it fell out of favor in the late thirties, but by '44 certain American scientists, particularly the ones without seniority/tenure, and all the ones with mistresses or same sex lovers, were convinced to grow them again. They also were convinced to wear European style suits.

It was all part of operation, HideAllTheEvilGermanScientistsFromTheGodlessCommies. We could hide the Germans in plain sight if the didn't stand out... and kept their mouths shut. It must have been a good plan as it took Wiesenthal decades to find some of them.

And it goes without saying, we wouldn't even consider asking the Evil German scientists to do evil for us. Nay, nay, we snatched them wholesale only to keep the godless commies from forcing the Evil German scientists to do evil for the Red Menace.

[Undertoad]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

...Is my phone screen unlock pattern too obvious?... it's not that weird, maybe it's not the "1234" of screen unlock patterns, but maybe it's the "2580"?... surely the "big L" or "big Z" is a more common unlock pattern than mine... are screen unlock swipe patterns supposed to be, like, secure enough?...

Answer to that last question: no

http://arstechnica.com/security/2015...lock-patterns/

The research is in its infancy since Android lock Patterns (ALPs) are so new and the number of collected real-world-patterns is comparatively miniscule. Still, the predictability suggests the patterns could one day be subject to the same sorts of intensive attacks that regularly visit passwords.

Marte Løge, a 2015 graduate of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, recently collected and analyzed almost 4,000 ALPs as part of her master's thesis. She found that a large percentage of them—44 percent—started in the top left-most node of the screen. A full 77 percent of them started in one of the four corners. The average number of nodes was about five, meaning there were fewer than 9,000 possible pattern combinations. A significant percentage of patterns had just four nodes, shrinking the pool of available combinations to 1,624. More often than not, patterns moved from left to right and top to bottom, another factor that makes guessing easier.

[lumberjim]

I use this one:



And I don't care if you know it. It's 6 moves and it's easy to remember